


Masks Hanging on Tomb Walls

by bloodofpyke



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 07:29:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodofpyke/pseuds/bloodofpyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>His hand is a breadth apart from her and she can feel the heat, she thinks, wonders if he carries a fire in his veins, burning under his skin.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Originally written for Jordan's <a href="http://magisterequitum.livejournal.com/524169.html">zombie ficathon</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masks Hanging on Tomb Walls

The ground shakes beneath their feet. Shakes, but doesn’t crack, doesn’t fracture, and a part of Katara wishes that it would, wishes that an escape would appear like magic and swallow her up. But it doesn’t, and so she fights on, teeth clenched, back aching. She’s always been a fighter, when it comes down to it.  
  
  
The world is empty now, and the silence is pounding, crushing. It’s the silence she hates the most, and they battle it with knives (they do not speak of where the knives came from, but her ghost flits about them even now, unflinching, hands still reaching out for the smooth blades), with blistering fire, with crashing water. But it too remains solid, unbroken.  
  
  
“Is this how it ends?” she asks at last, her voice rusty, jagged at the edges.  
  
  
“Maybe,” he answers, facing away from her and she remembers offering to try and heal his scar for him, ages ago, a lifetime ago. She’s glad she didn’t now; it’s familiar, and safe, somehow, and she has to stop herself from reaching out and tracing the corners of it.  
  
  
“I’m tired,” she says, and then, “I miss him.” She doesn’t say his name, can’t form the word for fear of cutting her mouth on it, but she thinks it.  _Sokka_ , she thinks,  _Sokka_  and the wound is deep and gaping and she fears it will never close.  
  
  
“We’ll get through this,” he murmurs, and his hand is a breadth apart from her and she can feel the heat, she thinks, wonders if he carries a fire in his veins, burning under his skin.  
  
  
“I know,” she whispers, and it’s naked, the steel in her voice, and even in the dying light her eyes flash with ice, with fury, with anger. She almost tells him then, almost tells him that she saw them earlier, saw Toph and Aang and Azula in the square and she almost laughed, to see them together, as if death was the strongest forger of peace. They were shadows though, stumbling and reaching and searching, and so she only turned away, closed her eyes against them as if that alone could will them away.  
  
  
She doesn’t tell him in the end, thinks that she might save it for another day, another week, another month.  _If they live that long_ , she thinks, but she knows, somewhere deep inside her, like a secret locked away beneath her ribs, that they will. He will think it fate, destiny when they stand, at the end, the world sprawled beneath their feet, empty, theirs. But she, she will know better (she’s always been a fighter).


End file.
